Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3812/The Uses of Ocean
(Lines written in an irresponsible holiday mood.)
To people who allege that we
Incline to overrate the Sea,
I answer, "We do not;
Apart from being coloured blue,
It has its uses not a few—
I cannot think what we should do.
LIf ever 'the deep did rot.'"
Take ships, for instance. You will note
That, lacking stuff on which to float,
They could not get about;
Dreadnought and liner, smack and yawl,
And other types that you'll recall—
They simply could not sail at all
It Ocean once gave out.
And see the trouble which it saves
To islands; but for all those waves
That made us what we are—
But for their help so kindly lent,
Teutons could march right through to Kent
And never need to circumvent
A single British tar.
Take fish, again. I have in mind
No better field that they could find
For exercise and sport;
How would the whale, I want to know,
The blubbery whale contrive to blow;
Where would your playful kipper go
If the supply ran short?
And hence we rank the Ocean high;
But there are privy reasons why
Its praise is on my lip:
I deem it, when my heart is set
On walking into something wet,
The nicest medium I have met
In which to take a dip.
Ah, speed the hour already fixed
When, mid the bathers (freely mixed),
In a polite costume
I mean to plunge beneath the spray
And, washing from a soul at play
The City's stain—three times a day—
Restore its vernal bloom.
Rocked like a babe upon the brine
It is my dream to float supine
And to the vast inane
Banish awhile from off my chest
The cares that hold it now obsessed,
And even take a clean-cut rest
From Ulster-on-the-brain.